discworldfandomcom-20200223-history
Maladict
Maladict is one of the volunteers who are recruited by Sgt. Jackrum's for Borogravia's Tenth Foot in the novel, Monstrous Regiment. ''He is a Reformed Vampire who spends several minutes filling in all his names, but the only one we hear is '''Maladict'. He arrives typically elegantly dressed, with his own sword, for the protection of others, not himself as short of the stake through the heart he cannot be killed. He dresses like a gentleman officer-candidate, and, since Vampires are notoriously good at getting people to do what they want, soon is promoted when the squad needs a lance-corporal. He has been a member of the Überwald League of Temperance and a Black Ribboner for two years and relies on transferring his obsession from blood to coffee. Black Ribbons are worn by those vampires who have signed the pledge of the League of Temperance and have sworn to become "B-total", an obvious take off on the Women's Christian Temperance League which was immensely popular in the early 1900s, whose members swore off alcohol rather than blood. Maladict carries the sack of coffee beans and the little silver coffee pot like a portable shrine, but shortly after he joins the squad they are stolen. Deprived of this crutch, he begins to have flashbacks from a war that never occurred in Discworld, fought with weapons he's never seen in a jungle area against an enemy called "Charlie" (Clearly a reference to the Vietnam War). The hallucinations are so powerful that others around him can hear and feel them too. Polly is warned about this by William de Worde's iconographer, Otto Chriek who advises them that someone should pack a stake because vampires deprived of their raison d'etre (having transferred it from the b-vord) may revert to full vampire status. Igors have experience in this area and call these hallucinations "flashsides" - flashbacks to events that the sufferers have never personally experienced. Fortunately, Sam Vimes is watching and Buggy Swires drops half a pound of Klatch's best on him (literally), just in time to prevent a total relapse into vampirism. Maladict's name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which means "accursedness or the act of bringing a curse" ('mal' meaning 'bad' in French combined with 'edict' meaning a 'proclamation'. The line "Oh Damn," said Maladict is therefore a very clever "Tom Swiftie". Maladict is also a play on the words 'mal' and 'adict' (bad addict) which Maladict is when deprived of his coffee later in the novel. Pratchett plays with the vampire motif throughout the novel making fun of famous movie lines like "I don't drink... wine" which Pratchett changes to "I, of course, don't drink... horse piss, ..." when they are drinking in the bar. The original line, immortalized by Bela Legosi, with the dramatic pause before the word 'wine', appeared in many subsequent movie versions of Dracula, down to the Francis Ford Coppola 1992 remake Bram Stoker's Dracula. It originally came from the Hamilton Deane stage play Dracula ''which was popular in New York in the 1920s. Over the course of the novel, it is discovered that all of the regiment recruits are in fact females dressed up as men and Maladict is the last recruit to reveal that he is in fact Maladicta and also female. She decides to remains in the army, joining Polly Perks in heading off to seek out Lieutenant (now Captain) Blouse to join the new improved Borogravian army. It might be amusing for a few hundred years. Army life's not so bad when most weapons used by the enemy will have no effect, and you can't be (permanently) killed. Annotation The flashsides that Maladict experience are from another time and space entirely: they are from the Vietnam War, where there ''was an enemy called Charlie (by you, if you were an American, at any rate), the forest was a lot more like a jungle, there were machines in the sky that went "whop-whop-whop" and the soldiery may well have employed terms such as "el-tee" (lit. 'LT' - shorthand for lieutenant, however it's pronounced) and "RV". A vampire named "Fenrir or Maledicta or something" sic is among the vampyrs in the family retinue of the de Magpyr family and is seen by Agnes Nitt to be overborne by the rebellious peasants of Escrow. Could this be the same Mal and the trigger event that made her join the Ribboners and develop a coffee addiction? After all, she has already been Weatherwaxed and craved tea, so it's not a long jump. Maladicta, one of the soldiers in Monstrous Regiment. A female vampire pretending to be male, who gave up blood to coffee and cigarettes. A very clever and cunning character. After being deprived of coffee for a few days, she begins to experience extreme hallucinations and paranoia - she is convinced that they are being followed by 'Charlie' (although it later turns out that they were being followed by Sargent Angua of the Anhk-Morpork city watch). Her hallucinations are described as 'contagious', with other characters also experiencing hallucinations when near her. Category:Vampires Category:Females Category:Characters Category:Character Stubs